


Subsistence

by minkmix



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other, Teen Dean Winchester, Teen Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:22:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: The Winchesters hunt a creature that starts hunting them back.





	Subsistence

**Author's Note:**

> Do Not Enter.

In his wisdom Sam had congratulated himself even after he knew he had been hopelessly caught.

The thing had brought him here to the nest it had made up out in the woods. The old cabin’s roof was somehow still solid enough to keep up about a decades worth of wood rot and mustering leaves that had collected in its strangled eaves. He was not sure how long ago the place had stopped serving humans but it was obvious now that not even a memory of them remained.

He'd grimaced when his back hit the gritty wood floor, but he’d smiled a little in the dark. He knew that his life might be over but he would never be made nourishment for this thing. The nature of the animal, or whatever it was, required need; a base desire from its prey to be able to feed from it at all. Not just the body or its surrender, it needed desire, the weeping and utter compliance.

Sam knew there was no guise this beast could conjure that would trick him. There was no stolen voice or scent of long hair that would fool him into thinking what touched his skin was someone else from some other time. This creature could do nothing to him. It could rend his limbs and drink his blood, but with all the meat and marrow he could readily provide, the thing would still choke and starve just the same.

But it hadn’t been that easy.

The being that took many shapes as it walked the dusty floors of the cabin turned to regard him on occasion. Sometimes it was the tall man at the rest stop that Sam had lent a quarter to at one of the car vacuum machines. Other times it was an older woman that he honestly couldn’t remember ever having seen in his life. Most of the time the only reason he knew it was there at all was because of the deep steady sound of its breathing.

When it finally resumed the shape he often saw it slip into when it passed out from under bright lamp light, it melded nicely with the shadows. It was gray, its skin almost blistering with low static, its face featureless except for two perfectly round black circles. Almost marionette like in its silence and careful measured movement in this place it had made its own.

As it approached him on the bare mattress he assumed it knew already that its cache of tricks would not have any effect on a kid like him. Hell, a man like him. There was a reason he’d been allowed to go off on his own for this job, three weeks past his 18th birthday and trusted to keep his end of it all on the book side. Of course he hadn’t obeyed one single rule he’d been given as soon as he picked up the trail. He followed it leading out into the woods that sat around the base of the mountain town’s craggy cliffs that towered over its winding two lanes and sparse township.

Unfortunately, what he was hunting, had hunted him right back.

The touch of it on his bare wrist was surprisingly dry, its fingertips long and gentle as they curved curiously around his flesh, feeling the bone and sinew with interest before sliding up under his sleeve, feeling out for that soft hollow of the underside of his elbow. Touching and exploring, like a professional in search of the perfect place to slide a needle. Sam had done well battling his nervousness, but as the night wore on he knew it was really just what he’d painted over his own fear to keep his mind from tipping. If he tipped than any chance he ever really had was as good as gone.

Nothing, no matter how brutally perfect wasn’t without a hitch or a flaw. He had to be wise enough to see his chance for what it was and when it happened. He had to be smarter than it. He had to not let himself despair or become overtly confident. He had to focus on the gray plain between both those places. It was the landscape that allowed survival.

After all, he'd walked away before.

The weight of its body surprised him. Its limbs seemed like a human being's, its knees sliding to either side of his hips, the dark flat plain of its chest resting almost affectionately against his own, as its smooth face rubbed up under his jaw and then slowly grazed his cheek. It felt more like an animal now than it had ever seemed before, and Sam kept very still, wondering just exactly what the thing would do when it took on some form to dazzle him into submission and it didn’t work as planned.

He felt his heart skip when its arm slowly rose, the sharp glistening black barb flicking out like a three inch thick stinger off some kind of insect.

Sam gasped as it sank hard and smooth into the flesh of his thigh just below his hip. It burned, but not as badly as it should have. Like a barb from something venomous, the poison was usually tipped with something antiseptic, something to numb the wound to lessen the fight of the pinned prey.

Then Sam felt it.

His body shuddered slightly out of control as the venom took. His jaw clenched convulsively as he strained to keep breathing, muscles locking tight up and down his frame. It was rushing through his bloodstream like he’d imagined a good hard spike of heroin felt to an addict, syrupy heat flooding every vein and traveling to every area under his skin like something sweet and perfect. The rush of it made him gasp out softly behind the gag it had tied tight over his mouth, made his back arch and lift off the bed under him, and made the weight kneeling between his legs feel immensely good.

Panting, he tried to look at the wound it had given him. So this was it? No mind games. No tricks of light and memory. Just base pure chemicals that forced his body to give this monster what it wanted so it could survive.

The gag was carefully pulled away. Sam looked back up into the strange unblinking black of its eyes, his bound hands resisting the urge to try to reach up and touch the monstrosity. There wasn’t a moment he couldn’t feel it touching him. Over his clothes. Somehow through them, aware of every fine tremor, every shift in breathing. Its eager reach made him feel as vulnerable as if he weren't wearing anything at all.

A warm hand rested on the shivering flesh of his lower belly as though he were being savored.

When the feed began Sam rapidly lost all thread and span of time.

It used his body in ways he didn’t know it could be used. His shoulders ached, his knees burned, his mouth was swollen from its attention. Every muscle he owned was strained by its unnatural stamina and unquenchable need. It kept him at his edges by slowing when he grew too loud, stopping completely when he tensed and shook, his cries growing too soft. He learned that those were the moments that it wanted, not his finish but all the things that tormented him in between. When he eventually wavered, almost crying in his exhausted frustration, the slick barb was extracted again and plunged deep back down into his bare thigh.

Then it would all start all over again, its fist wrapped in the sweat damp hair at the base of his neck, as he fought each moan it forced from him with every stroke and push of its body.

Trying to focus on the ceiling, a smear of setting sun slashing across its uneven surface, he struggled to stay up onto his elbows while it tried to pin him down again, pull him back onto the floor. The table top was cold to his damp heated skin. The tense muscles of his stomach clenched at the hands that pushed him back into the over stuffed chairs. His palms ached from bracing himself against the wall. His shoulder blades burned from being pressed against the tiles under the scorching water of the shower head.

Every moment when he thought he could finally stop and gather his scattered frenzied thoughts, he would be taken by the chin and lead back down into its ravenous grip.

Sam only knew he slept at all because it sometimes woke him out of a deep pit of worn fatigue. He knew he should be thirsty and hungry but he felt none of those things as his senses gradually came back to him. One by urgent one. Flexing his trembling hands in the still warm air of the cabin, he breathlessly watched the thing move over his body.

It would smooth its shape into the form of hands to move over the sweaty skin over his cheek bone, the gentle sensation of finger tips tracing smoothly up the insides of his thighs. He knew he was speaking, shaking his head as it lead his hand between his own legs and made him start everything again, its hand a formless fist making him move when he couldn’t anymore. He tried to think of other places. Remove his mind from his body to make it all go away for just one moment. He knew if this didn’t stop soon then he would be in even bigger trouble than he already was.

If this didn’t stop, he knew it would keep using him up until there was nothing left.

It wouldn’t end until he was dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took him a little while to realize that what he was looking at was the light coming through some white curtains.

It had let him sleep for a while this time. He wasn’t positive because his watch was missing but he was almost certain he had been trapped in the place for going on three days. Sam refocused his blurry eyes on the offending light. For a long while he had thought he was dreaming, the gauzy soft glow like a sunrise on an overcast ocean morning. Bright and cold, clean and quiet. But as his eyes adjusted he started to see the dusty stiff fabric for what it was, hanging down to the cobwebbed pine wood panes. One inch of sky was visible just above dull brass rungs. Sam raised his hand, surprised that his limbs obeyed him at all, holding off some of the glare that shone down onto his face.

Three days.

They would have started looking for him the night he never called them to check in. Dad was always real big on checking in. If one of his boys didn’t when told then the whole operation went to Def-Con 5 pretty quick. If you got the old man in that kind of lather you’d better hope it wasn’t just your watch battery dying. You’d better be into some real shit or his dad would sure to make some up just so you didn’t miss out. That meant in three days they hadn’t been able to find his tracks. Hadn’t been able to figure out just where on the map he had up and vanished on.

Sam studied his raised hand and frowned.

For a few moments he thought he was just seeing things, a product of having been kept awake for so many hours on whatever juice the thing kept him on in its black stinger. He turned his hand around, his palm facing away. He wasn’t seeing things. The window light was shining through his flesh. Like sunlight through opaque plastic. Swallowing, Sam saw his hand start to shake, his body suddenly going numb as the realization of how this creature was finishing him off actually worked.

It wasn’t just feeding off him, it was draining him dry. His flesh and bones were becoming as translucent as frayed silk. His entire makeup was wearing thin. There was only one end to this ride. In a surge of panic, he struggled to sit up but found that lifting his hand had been a feat within itself. He opened his mouth ready to make any noise at all, no matter how far off in the woods it had hidden him and was suddenly struck in terror when nothing came out. Not even a rasp of breath.

Sam shut his eyes.

With slow even calm inhales and exhales he brought himself back to the tipping point again. The place before panic and above fear. He couldn’t lose it now. He couldn’t afford to be scared or start wondering when he was going to disappear completely. Looking down the length of his body on the bed he wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t see any of his physical self there. The bed appeared empty. His weight making the middle of it dip, and his limbs shifting the single draped sheet, but otherwise it was as if he wasn’t there at all.

It was then that he noticed the creature’s presence. Across the room in the shadows of what made the long open space of the hunting lodge, it was sitting in one of the chairs, watching him quietly. As far as he could remember being in its captivity it had never spoken or made any kind of sound. Swallowing nervously again he wondered why it wasn’t sliding him onto his back, its barb delivering the magic that would make him forget all the pain and submit to whatever it wanted until he finally had nothing left to give.

It stood and did something that looked like a stretch. It reminded Sam of a cat after it’d had a particularly nice nap. The lazy unconcerned easy manner of the play of muscles. The shift of its gaze as it considered what it ought to do next.

Without much more deliberation, it walked to a heavy wood paneled door that sat opposite of the main bolted front. With a flip of its old styled latch, it opened right up.

Sam had noticed the door before and had correctly guessed it was some kind of storage closet for whoever owned this place and spent their winters here. He never remembered it being opened before but his recollection of the last 72 hours was hazy at best. He recognized his own knife, taken from him however long ago it had been. The blade slipped into the closet's depths until Sam heard something give. The heavy fall of a body slumping forward right into the beast's arms.

Sam felt his breath catch in this throat.

It was his brother.

It wasn't a long trip to seat him in one of the comfortable chairs that sat in the center of the room. The ropes had been severed but their tied ends were still looped tightly around his wrists. With a few surprisingly gentle pats to his face, the creature delicately roused Dean to wakefulness.

His brother didn’t look too bad. His clothes were clean of dirt and blood. His jeans ripped in the places he remembered them already worn down to the threads. The only damage Sam could see was on Dean’s mouth. Dean’s lip was swollen, dried blood brown on his chin. When had this creature gotten to him? His brother must have found Sam’s trail after all but had ended up walking right into the same pit fall. Sam tried to speak again but no sound passed his lips.

His brother groaned when he finally came to.

Sam waited with pained anxiety for Dean's wary puzzled face to change. His expression turn to anger or even fear. But there was nothing but soft baffled wonder at the blank gray face leaning down close to his own. Blinking, Sam didn't understand. He could hear a voice. A voice joining his brother’s that he recognized. There was a conversation happening, just low enough that Sam could make out nothing but the urgency in his brother's tone.

The thing’s hand reached up to touch the cut on his mouth, but Dean instinctively drew back away. Sam waited for him to rise and strike, withdraw one of his hidden weapons and end this.

But nothing happened.

Incredibly, Dean had leaned back and tiredly eased his hands around his aching shoulders. He felt his own head and neck. He laughed softly about something Sam was sure had to do with what his brother considered good luck. There was more conversation. Sam heard his name mentioned twice. Talk of the local town and some closed off roads due to flooding coming down from the mountains spring thaw.

Dean and the creature stood.

The bathroom light clicked on, and when Dean faltered, a hand steadied him until he could stand at the sink under his own power. The sink ran with water, a wash cloth brought up and turned the rust blood to bright red on a split lip. Dean hesitantly but quickly stilled the hand attempting to clean his mouth.

Again, Dean’s confusion flickered. The intimate gesture making him wary. Puzzlement clouding his eyes and making him step away until he had backed himself up against the counter. His voice was louder this time. A question. A determined tone that Sam knew his brother shared with only one other person on the planet.

_Oh God._

Suddenly everything seemed to make sense.

Just as Sam made the connection, he saw the gray form ripple, the height and broad shoulders of his father wavering as real as anything for one moment there in the stark light of the bathroom. He could smell that old scent of leather and that aftershave. For just one moment he heard the pitch and fall of his father’s reprimand. Telling Dean to calm down. Telling his brother that he’d been hurt and needed to take it easy.

The thing had made Dean believe he was in the presence of his father. Dean said something else when hands gripped him firmly and sat him up on the thick yellow porcelain countertop. Seating him up there with the running water like he was some little kid. It took his brother out of his line of sight. All Sam could see now was his brother’s spread knees, denim frayed down over the tops of his laced up boots. He didn't know what exactly Dean was seeing standing much too close to him, leaning in further, speaking in a voice that his brother trusted.

Sam knew what he could see. The gray form tethering from the mostly human shape it held for whatever reasons it had. Its limbs slowly wound around Dean’s knees and spread them so it could stand easily between his legs. There was the sound of Dean’s question again, the edge of it tinged in an uncertainty that wasn’t hiding his growing apprehension. But Dean couldn’t know what this thing was. What it was capable of making you see for its own simple amusement. For its own need to feed.

Its limbs uncoiled again. Sam heard the sickening thud of Dean’s head contacting hard with the wall, his wrists doing the same. The thing knew it could go fairly far with the face it was using before the new food it found would try to make it stop. It knew this boy could be pushed almost to the edge before he would realize that he was in trouble.

“D-Dad?” Dean’s voice sounded small and cautious.

Sam couldn’t see what the hand that went to his brother’s face did. But he knew what it had done to him. Touching his mouth and brushing against his eyelashes, forcing him to shut his eyes to its insidious curious touch. Dean spoke again, his knees shifting uncomfortably with his father’s hips right between them. Sam went cold when he heard the words come out in an uncertain stutter that was as unfamiliar on his brother as the fear that lay behind it.

“W-What are you doin—“

His brother’s protest was brutally muffled by the indistinct mouth of the creature closing over his face. Dean had finally realized he had to fight, but it was too late. At last reacting to the assault, his mind catching up with what his senses had already figured out, he lashed out. One knee wrenched upwards, the other twisted, a steel toed boot crashing into the open sink mirror, shattering it into glittering dust and jagged pieces.

The outburst was immediately and completely subdued. Dean wheezed as its limbs rapidly wrapped around him, pushing him down firmly onto his back. It surged forward then, forcing his thighs wide and dipping its face against his exposed throat eagerly.

Sam could hear the sudden startled intake of his brother’s breath as it started to really touch him. The soft lost moan that followed was made of nothing but surprise and hurt. Pure baffled confused pain.

_Dean._

Sam hoped what was pinning his brother down against that counter wasn’t clinging onto the same face it had promised Dean solace with. He hoped it had shifted and morphed again. Sam didn’t even care if it used his own face. Or someone dead and forgotten. The more it played its trick the more the trick was revealed to be nothing. The joy it gathered would weaken as its victim lost their repulsion and fear. The only other trick it had was forcing its prey to succumb to its basic needs. But Dean knew by now didn’t he? Sam felt his heart beating like it might break free from his chest. His brother knew this was all some sham to make its victims susceptible?

With a sickening slick wet sound, two vicious black barbs extruded from the base of the creature’s wrists.

Sam winced when he heard his brother cry out as they sank into the thick muscle of his thighs. The stuff worked fast. Sam knew enough about it to know that. Dean’s breathing changed, slowed then quickened, his struggles turning sluggish with a low desperate terrible moan that made Sam want to cover his ears and never hear anything like it again. He saw Dean’s trembling hands grope forward, grasping at his father’s shoulders as he was neatly and nearly suffocated with its gaping kiss. Sam heard the hiss of Dean’s belt come undone, sliding through the denim loops and landing loudly on the floor. Dean whimpered as the thing slid him further onto his back, smothering him with its tongue and working its hands down into his clothes.

Sam felt his own jaw shaking in helpless frustration. He couldn’t take his eyes away from Dean’s weak struggles, every option in how to stop this happening to his brother frantically flaring and fading as fast as they came. Sam couldn’t move. He couldn’t even speak. What the hell was he supposed to do? Fighting to keep his head clear, he searched his immediate vicinity again as if he could have somehow missed something that would help.

Something crashed to the floor and shattered. Dean’s fight had renewed with the thing successfully pushing his jeans down his thighs and working his shirt down over his shoulders. Gasping under its mouth, he was writhing in its grip, the things arms locked under his knees as he continued to try to kick free.

“ _P-Please—_ “ Dean managed to gasp from under the onslaught. “ _Dad, please—s-stop--_ “

The creature hadn’t changed its face for Dean’s sake, it had retained the visage for the pure fun of it. This way its victim was not only forced to take it, but be charged through with an artificial desire for something they might rather gladly die before experiencing. Growling angrily under its hold, Dean thrashed wildly again, this time so violently that Sam flinched when predator and prey rolled to a crash down to the floor.

Knowing what the injection felt like, Sam marveled that Dean had enough presence of mind to be fighting back at all. Sam supposed he would have reacted maybe a lot differently himself if the thing had provided a face with its hands. Sam might not have surrendered as easily to its attack if the being who was making him do the things he’d done had looked and sounded like—

Maybe that was exactly the mistake Sam had been waiting for it to make.

It had taken on the voice and guise of John Winchester but it didn’t really know what that would make his oldest son do. It rightfully assumed shock and disgust. It assumed the sickening self loathing when the agonizing pull of its chemicals forced the body to want to yield to a touch it didn’t want. All it expected was a feast of unnatural supplication. Again and again until it was all gone.

His brother made a harsh stifled noise when the creature eventually struck him hard across the face in an effort to help staunch the unexpected power in the conflict. The monster seemed guarded to have even done it, using its limbs in mass to try to restrain what was supposed to be lying vulnerable in its arms by now.

But Dean was different. Dean was bewildering. All this thing wanted to do was feed and this human being wasn’t making what should have been a very simple task, very easy at all.

In fact, this man was making it almost impossible.

Sam started when he felt the sweaty fist he was making suddenly leave the rough surface of the exposed mattress. It felt like something heavy that had been pressing down on him was suddenly just gone. Staring down at his free arm, he quickly looked to his other unseen hand and strained until the glint of flesh flooded back. Blood was thrumming back through his skin, taking back its shape, his form assembling again right before his eyes. Was it because his brother was distracting it? Feeding it? Absorbing all its attention and hunger?

It didn’t matter.

Sam didn’t really care much about semantics at the moment.

When his feet felt the floor he stood up as fast as he thought he could without falling down again. In four unsteady steps he was at the table where the creature had left his knife.

Sam turned when he heard Dean choke out another cry, the bathroom door splintering apart when they crashed back through it, the writhing form over him covering his face, and entangled in his trapped wrists. He could see the phantom shape of his father there, his strong hand squeezing Dean’s throat, his other hand pressed down low between his son’s thrashing legs. The rest of the animal was using every limb it owned trying to keep Dean still, keeping his violent hands down, holding him spread prone for what it desired to accomplish.

Suddenly flat out in the middle of the floor, Dean abruptly saw Sam standing there above them. His eyes were wide, flushed cheeks wet with confounded outrage. His desperate battle to free himself from the thing halting in his shock at the sight of his younger brother’s battered body. Sam felt himself smile a little. At least Dean could see him now.

It would take just one downward stroke. Not just anywhere, but across the back of its neck. Decapitation wasn’t necessary but it didn’t hurt if you wanted to make sure the job had been done right. Sam was glad that when the blade started to descend that he no longer saw any shapes or sounds that made up the sum of his father. It made it much easier to slide the metal between the bone it found and wrench it in the horrible direction with what strength he had left.

There was a stomach-turning snap and a gasp of ragged breath.

Then just like that it was over.

Stunned, Dean had gone still, panting and shaking under its twitching form. Sam wondered if his brother saw the formless gray uniformity of the creature he’d watched for three days or if their father was the one bleeding on top of him.

Sam slumped down to his knees, his stomach finally revolting from being denied anything but the animal’s chemical sting for so long. Clutching his belly, he stared hard at the floor with watering eyes as he tried to bring up something when there was nothing there.

A hand slid uncertainly unto his bare shoulder and he looked up into his brother’s startled face. A bruised face. Sam’s gaze fell down the marks that were darkening on Dean’s neck. He briefly wondered what the total charge was on his own skin. He suddenly felt like he wanted to start laughing but he bit down on his tongue to stop it from coming out.

The knife slid loudly onto the floor and as he made to stand. Spotting his jeans, he sat down awkwardly on the bed that had almost seen his end and started pulling them on. His flannel was flung in a corner. The boots were neatly lined up by the wall. Picking up the knife, he wiped it clean on his sleeve before slipping it into a back pocket.

He followed Dean out the front door, pausing for one moment to look back at the body that neither one of them had discussed disposing of. It didn’t look like anyone once again. It was gray and faceless. Sprawled strangely in its death throes with a slice of light cutting across its body from the damaged bathroom door.

Sam turned his attention back outside.

The winding dirt furrowed path turned quickly into the dark green jumble of the mountain woods. Glancing towards the sky it looked like it might be getting dark soon and if he remembered much about that road, they had a long walk out of here that he’d rather not be doing through towards the dawn.

He took a deep breath of crisp cold air and settled his shaking hands deep into his front jean pockets.

“L-Let’s go.” Sam heard himself say hoarsely.


End file.
